Estheim Family Manuscripts: box 155, folder 3
by Trialia
Summary: "I never did have many friends, and those I had are nearly all missing. If I could bring them back, through resolving the paradoxes, without returning us all to fal'Cie control, do you think I would hesitate, even if it meant leaving my original timeline and living in stasis for centuries to create a new one in which I might not exist?" Hope considers his past and potential future.


**Title**: Estheim Family Manuscripts: box 155, folder 3

**Author**: Trialia

**Fandom**: Final Fantasy XIII-2

**Rating**: G/K

**Word Count**: 1911

**Character(s)**: Hope Estheim, Aina Stein, Alyssa Zaidelle

**Challenge/Recipient**: NightsMistress, for Yuletide 2015

**Summary**: "I never did have many friends, and those I had are nearly all missing. If I could bring them back, through resolving the paradoxes, without returning us all to fal'Cie control, do you think I would hesitate, even if it meant leaving my original timeline and living in stasis for centuries to create a new one in which I might not exist?" Hope considers his past and potential future.

**Notes**: Thanks to A for help with temporal physics & K for beta-reading.

#~#~#

I don't really have that many friends.

To be honest, I never really did. I've always been a bit of a nerdy type, and that made people see me as weak. Before the Purge most teenage boys would have found it embarrassing to admit they were friends with their parents, and believe me I've heard all the insults, "mommy's boy" being the kindest. But my mom was my best friend.

We were together so much, and my dad was barely around for years, always off on business or some such reason. Many years ago I would have said "some such excuse", but I got to know him better the older I grew. I learned he didn't want to go away every time; that he did it because he thought it was part of what we wanted from him as a family, and part of what was expected of him in other ways by other people. Anyway, Mom and I were each other's only company a lot of the time. So I guess it was natural that we would end up either best friends or worst enemies.

After the Purge, of course, it stopped being quite so "uncool" to admit to having cared for the people you lost, if you lost your parents, one or both. Far too many people did, of all generations.

I'm glad I had time enough to know Dad as an adult, even if I lost him in the end. Of course, everyone loses their parents eventually — admittedly, not usually as early as I lost my mom, but outliving your parents is the kind of thing that happens in the course of a normal life. Well, for most people.

What with the l'Cie thing, I've sometimes wondered whether I'd have any kids myself, and whether I'd outlive them if I'd stayed dreaming in crystal. I don't know of any l'Cie with kids except Sazh, though, and Dajh was born several years before his dad was branded. Maybe l'Cie can't have children. It might be kinder, if there's anything kind about being a l'Cie.

Anyway, I was bullied quite a bit as a kid, so I mostly kept to myself except for my science clubs. I was a short kid, the shortest in most groups even when placed among my age-mates, and that didn't help, I guess. I got my full growth late. I've often wondered, since, whether being made a l'Cie spurred my hormones into making me so much taller so quickly, incidentally, since I shot up eleven inches in the space of about five years.

Advanced classes and skipping grades have never done much to help my socialisation, but socialisation was never a priority for me. I admit that it hasn't become any more so during my tenure with the Academy, either. Perhaps in social terms skipping so many grades wasn't good for me, but it's done nothing to harm my position among my colleagues as an adult; I had my doctorate by the time I was twenty, and by the time I was twenty-four I was leading the Academy entire.

Before the l'Cie thing, though, and even after for a while, I was weak. I admit it. Of course, hormones could've had a lot to do with how upset I was at the time, too. Fourteen is no age for any kid to deal with the amount of stuff that was thrown at me at that time. But I truly believe that even as an adult I would have found it a difficult load to handle, just as I saw my newly-l'Cie companions struggling with their own burdens.

The death of my mother threw me into anger, hatred and grief. I nearly gave into despair when I was made a Pulse l'Cie that same day: a sworn enemy of the world I've known and loved all my life. It didn't take long for despair to hit me hard enough that I nearly gave in to it.

That was when I learned my most important life lesson - from Light.

"It's not a case of can or can't," she'd said to me. "Some things you just do."

I might've forgotten or misremembered the rest of what she said after such a very long time – I know it's been a long time, though how long it's really been for me, I couldn't tell you even if you thought to ask me. I'm not sure it really matters.

I remember the most important part, though. I think I always will. It's ingrained in me now, a part of who I am, of the man I've become.

The lesson I taught myself during those days and weeks of fighting is a big part of me now, too: Never stop. If you stop, you give despair space to edge in, and that is the one thing I've never been able to afford. The Purge, becoming a l'Cie, the manhunt for us all, fighting Orphan, creating the Academy, dealing with the death of my mom and all my new friends going missing... I never gave up. I felt like it, sometimes, but I never did.

To imagine I may lose all that if and when the timeline reverts to its proper course... it isn't easy. But it's a risk worth taking to recover my family. By family I mean my dad, but also Light, Fang and Vanille, Snow and Serah, Sazh and Dajh... but not Mom. She's still family even though she's gone, and she always will be – but I can't get her back. I know that. That would mean changing what happened to everybody on Cocoon.

I'm beginning to believe that thanks to all our research into paradox and temporal theory and the practicalities, we could probably accomplish that change if necessary. And yet – I would never want to be the one to put the entire population back under the tyranny of fal'Cie rule. It just isn't in me. I'm not a hero, but I want to save my world, and to save it means saving it for the people. For everybody, not just for me or my family or friends.

I'm starting to worry what changing the timeline will do to some of them, though. Alyssa acts all upbeat and confident — at times she almost reminds me of Vanille — but she's gained an increasingly brittle edge to her laughter that I'm not sure she's noticed.

I thought at first it had to do with my rejecting her advances. Being asexual at heart, I'm not really interested in that sort of relationship. However, as the years have passed, I've realised that the rumours about her using me for her career are probably truer than I'm willing to admit out loud. Except that it's not her career she wants.

The explosions we caused with our time-travel experiments made her laugh even harder, while I just smiled in the background; they remind me of the fireworks I saw with Mom every year up 'til the night before she died and, while fireworks now make me a little sad, they still make me happy.

Sometimes, though, things that amuse Alyssa give me a bad feeling. More about her than about them, specifically.

I'm one of the highest-ranked scientists and have a very strong degree of economic and general power in this new world we've created. Alyssa has been there to create it along with me, knowing for most of the time just what it was I wanted to do and the vision I had in mind. But sometimes, when the sparks dance in reflection in her eyes, I get the feeling that what she really wants is to tear the whole world down herself. Both worlds. Before they can do the same to her.

What can I say? I think all I can do now is hope that a century or so longer in what amounts to crystal stasis will calm her down. Even if it means putting up with me for that long.

After all, we _are_ supposed to be friends as well as colleagues. Insofar as I have any friends left in this world.

I'd like to keep the ones I have, get back the ones I lost, and save my planet from destruction. Is that such a tough thing to ask? It's beginning to seem like it.

But I can't stop fighting. No matter what I do. The best I can do is try to ensure that as few people get hurt as possible. Whatever it takes. And our journey has already begun.

Time will do what it must. For now, we wait.

#~#~#

ACADEMY REPORT:

Time Theories and Fields of Study Within the Academy's Past

— Aina Stein, 572 AF

_Dimensional and spatiotemporal theory have long been major topics of study within the Academy, particularly within the higher echelons of its leadership._

_There are sadly few non-classified historical records left of those retrieved from the organisation's central processing facility in Augusta Tower, Academia. The tower in question was abandoned almost totally by the Academy after its mysterious failure in approximately 15 AF. However, according to those that can be accessed, this seemingly unusual interest originated within the primary research team headed by founding Academy council member Hope Estheim._

_Estheim went on to become Director of the Academy within a few short years of its establishment. He and his team pursued this research extensively for a number of years, leading to the creation of a number of experimental constructs such as a now-defunct attempt at artificial intelligence, and an improved time capsule._

_To return to our original topic, spatiotemporal theories regarding the number, variety and type of potential dimensions in this world have largely been based around the four observable dimensions (linear, planar, cubic and temporal) and what most call the Unseen World, or Valhalla. Those further posited are usually based simply around the temporal element, but with attributes differing notably from those of standard chronological and sequential time, as with those relating to the flow of time within Valhalla._

_The latter is mentioned in what records we have from people with experience of that realm - of whom we know almost as little. It is unclear whether time in Valhalla is a dimension of its own, whether stopped entirely in a kind of stasis not unlike that granted to successful l'Cie, or held in a state of what is often referred to as "timeless time"._

_Historically, the measurement of such time-like dimensions as "cosmological time" or "light time" has been left either only partially addressed or unaddressed altogether. This could make one wonder whether measurement of a time-like dimension is possible or even plausible. This is not, however, a part of the argument to be put forward by the author of this article..._

#~#~#

The above excerpt was found in a file discovered by a young scientist from the nascent Academy among her notes on the paradox situation in 5 AF; she had scribbled upon the paper copy a number of comments which clarify that she was unaware of the origin of these "future notes" and did not recall writing them at any time in the past. One may only assume at present that their existence is due to the ongoing paradox in this location. Whether they will revert to their original state as, when and if the timeline does so is yet to be determined, as was (prior to their discovery) much of the information contained in this document regarding Valhalla.

\- Alyssa Zaidelle, Ensign-Trainee.

_~fin_


End file.
